ped. "Have I told my fiancee about it?" he mocked.
"Why it was she who sent me the circular in the first place! But,
'tell her about it'? Why, man, in ten thousand years, and then some,
how could I make any sane person understand?"

"You're beginning to make me understand," confessed the Doctor.

"Then you're no longer sane," scoffed Stanton. "The crazy magic of it
has surely then taken possession of you too. Why how could I go to any
sane person like Cornelia--and Cornelia is the most absolutely,
hopelessly sane person you ever saw in your life--how could I go to
anyone like that, and announce: 'Cornelia, if you find any perplexing
change in me during your absence--and your unconscious neglect--it is
only that I have fallen quite madly in love with a person'--would you
call it a person?--who doesn't even exist. Therefore for the sake of
this 'person who doesn't exist', I ask to be released."

"Oh! So you do ask to be released?" interrupted the Doctor.

"Why, no! Certainly not!" insisted Stanton. "Suppose the girl you love
does hurt your feelings a little bit now and then, would any man go
ahead and give up a real flesh-and-blood sweetheart for the sake of
even the most wonderful paper-and-ink girl whom he was reading about
in an unfinished serial story? Would he, I say--would he?"

"Y-e-s," said the Doctor soberly. "Y-e-s, I think he would, if what
you call the 'paper-and-ink girl' suggested suddenly an entirely new,
undreamed-of vista of emotional and spiritual satisfaction."

"But I tell you 'she's' probably a BOY!" persisted Stanton doggedly.

"Well, why don't you go ahead and find out?" quizzed the Doctor.

"Find out?" cried Stanton hotly. "Find out? I'd like to know how
anybody is going to find out, when the only given address is a private
post-office box, and as far as I know there's no sex to a post-office
box. Find out? Why, man, that basket over there is full of my letters
returned to me because I tried to 'find out'. The first time I asked,
they answered me with just a teasing, snubbing telegram, but ever
since then they've simply sent back my questions with a stern printed
slip announcing, "Your letter of ---- is hereby returned to you.
Kindly allow us to call your attention to the fact that we are not
running a correspondence bureau. Our circular distinctly states,
etc."

"Sent you a printed slip?" cried the Doctor scoffingly. "The
love-letter business must be thriving. Very evidently you are by no